Analysis of Development of Czech Foreign Trade in Foods and Beverages

The aim of this paper is to analyse the development of Czech foreign trade in food products and beverages (the CPA groups 10 and 11 within the Classification System) and to evaluate the position of individual CPA groups and their products, even within the EU, using two indices of comparative advantage (RCA) and trade balances. The purpose is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the given issue as the analytical work dealing with whole Czech agrarian foreign trade is less focused on foods and drinks. However, they should be a core area of business, especially with regard to competitiveness of the agricultural sector. The sources of data on foreign trade are public databases of Czech Statistical Office (External Trade Database) and Eurostat (International Trade database ComExt). Regarding the time series, period of the years 2005-2013 is analysed. Significant changes in the sales and purchases of foodstuff and beverages were occurred in the context of accession to the EU but these changes are not in focus yet. The paper is engaged in the period when the Czech Republic has already been a member of the EU, and fully entrenched. The point is which results in foreign trade with. Results showed that value of Czech imports of food products and beverages in the years 2005-2013 increased in the larger extent than exports, and negative trade balance deepened by 51 % to 29.3 Bn CZK. The degree of coverage of imports by exports, however, improved from 73.0 % to 77.3 % due to lower dynamics of growth of imports than exports. Besides of the own assessment of the Czech food and beverage foreign trade, our work has consisted in specific transfer of the Combined Nomenclature to the nomenclature CPA. The methodological contribution is then our own list of customs codes, respectively their aggregations, belonging to the individual CPA disciplines. This should be useful for next analysis

A Statewide Multi-Institutional Study of Asymptomatic Pretreatment Testing of Radiation Therapy Patients for SARS-CoV-2 in a High-Incidence Region of the United States

Purpose: Our purpose was to establish the prevalence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) in asymptomatic patients scheduled to receive radiation therapy and its effect on management decisions. Methods and Materials: Between April 2020 and July 2020, patients without influenza-like illness symptoms at four radiation oncology departments (two academic university hospitals and two community hospitals) underwent polymerase chain reaction testing for SARS-CoV-2 before the initiation of treatment. Patients were tested either before radiation therapy simulation or after simulation but before treatment initiation. Patients tested for indications of influenza-like illness symptoms were excluded from this analysis. Management of SARS-CoV-2-positive patients was individualized based on disease site and acuity. Results: Over a 3-month period, a total of 385 tests were performed in 336 asymptomatic patients either before simulation (n = 75), post-simulation, before treatment (n = 230), or on-treatment (n = 49). A total of five patients tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, for a pretreatment prevalence of 1.3% (2.6% in north/central New Jersey and 0.4% in southern New Jersey/southeast Pennsylvania). The median age of positive patients was 58 years (range, 38-78 years). All positive patients were white and were relatively equally distributed with regard to sex (2 male, 3 female) and ethnicity (2 Hispanic and 3 non-Hispanic). The median Charlson comorbidity score among positive patients was five. All five patients were treated for different primary tumor sites, the large majority had advanced disease (80%), and all were treated for curative intent. The majority of positive patients were being treated with either sequential or concurrent immunosuppressive systemic therapy (80%). Initiation of treatment was delayed for 14 days with the addition of retesting for four patients, and one patient was treated without delay but with additional infectious-disease precautions. Conclusions: Broad-based pretreatment asymptomatic testing of radiation oncology patients for SARS-CoV-2 is of limited value, even in a high-incidence region. Future strategies may include focused risk-stratified asymptomatic testing

Myriad Mapping of nanoscale minerals reveals calcium carbonate hemihydrate in forming nacre and coral biominerals

Abstract Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) is abundant on Earth, is a major component of marine biominerals and thus of sedimentary and metamorphic rocks and it plays a major role in the global carbon cycle by storing atmospheric CO2 into solid biominerals. Six crystalline polymorphs of CaCO3 are known—3 anhydrous: calcite, aragonite, vaterite, and 3 hydrated: ikaite (CaCO3·6H2O), monohydrocalcite (CaCO3·1H2O, MHC), and calcium carbonate hemihydrate (CaCO3·½H2O, CCHH). CCHH was recently discovered and characterized, but exclusively as a synthetic material, not as a naturally occurring mineral. Here, analyzing 200 million spectra with Myriad Mapping (MM) of nanoscale mineral phases, we find CCHH and MHC, along with amorphous precursors, on freshly deposited coral skeleton and nacre surfaces, but not on sea urchin spines. Thus, biomineralization pathways are more complex and diverse than previously understood, opening new questions on isotopes and climate. Crystalline precursors are more accessible than amorphous ones to other spectroscopies and diffraction, in natural and bio-inspired materials